It’s been said before, but all life’s a journey, be it traveling in The Van or just getting through the day.

Sunday, April 8, 2018

Oh, That Can’t Be Good!

Just what you don’t want to see pulling into the site next
to you. A cheap-ass used FEMA trailer behind a $70,000 truck with a contractor’s
generator in the bed!

Because of low standards, questionable materials, potential
bio-hazards, little to no maintenance, and hard use FEMA has this rule about
only using these two-bedroom temporary-housing units once before they sell them
off. But not to the public because they don’t want to take on the liability, they
will only sell them in bulk to ‘investors’ who then sell them on, as is, to
uneducated buyers. Sure, these discarded
trailers can be picked up cheap, but there’s a good reason for that! They were
cheap to begin with.

Notice that the manufactures are so embarrassed about how
poorly these things are built they refuse to put their name on them. And since they
are designed to be parked cheek-by-jowl with water, sewer, and electric hookups
they have no tanks or 12V electrical systems which, along with very few windows (Windows cost money!) and a dormitory style fridge, makes them an exceedingly poor choice as a camping unit.

If
you look close at the very right edge of the photo you can see that these
particular people set up one of those Coleman ‘privacy rooms’ for toilet and
shower function and they carried water from the campground’s single central
spigot in open-topped 5 gallon buckets.

Just think of how comfortable and practical a tent-camp they could have put together for only a fraction of what they paid for that useless trailer!

Fortunately this couple only used the generator for about a
half-hour twice a day, (to run a microwave maybe?) and left after a couple
days.

Could have been a lot worse! Could have been one of those 45
foot, 4-slide, residential fridge-freezer, 400 watt outdoor entertainment
center, roof bristling with three antennas and two different kinds of satellite
dish coaches that have to run the generator constantly just to say alive.

I think that window is over the sink. There's three more, slightly larger windows on the door-side of the trailer. One each for the bedrooms at the front and back and one more for the living/dining/kitchen. But you are right, besides no graphics or manufacture's logos, you can spot a FEMA trailer right off by it's disproportionately small amount of window-glass.

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About Me

For the first 18 years my parents told me what to do. For the next 40 years ‘The Man’ told me what to do. Now I’m retired and have to figure out what to do all by myself. . . I’m still waiting to see just how well that works out. . .